US Hedge Fund Raider Turns London Defeat to Victory
UK investment trusts saw off activist Boaz Weinstein earlier this year, but they have been no match for the campaign that followed.
Boaz Weinstein.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergUS hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein was rebuffed when he tried storming the boardrooms of seven UK investment firms earlier this year. But the activist has since shown he didn’t need to win to achieve his goals and to make money.
To recap, Weinstein sees an opportunity in publicly traded companies that invest their capital in stocks and sometimes private firms. Shareholders of these so-called investment trusts get something similar to a mutual fund with the added benefit of daily liquidity and access to equity investments they might be unable to make directly. These trusts typically trade at a discount to their underlying portfolio value. Blame corporate bloat – the costs of a board, advisers, financial reporting and so on – and often mediocre to poor investment performance.